Bad manors - Lisa Armstrong

Struggling for air in a Darwinian shark pond at work and a house that is falling to pieces around her ears, single mother Cat McGinty dreams of a new job, a new home and a new life of rural bliss.

Jess, her unpredictable, sexually hyperactive au pair and Lily, her ten- going on seventeen- year-old daughter would quite like to come with her.

When Cat unexpectedly inherits a run down health farm in the glorious Dorset countryside, miles from memories of her feckless ex and the demands of her disapproving feminist mother, it seems their prayers have been answered.

Unfortunately Butely is damper than the English channel, its patients tighter than a bad facelift and she has to share its ownership with a reclusive stranger who looks at Cat as if she were a particularly nasty strain of foot and mouth. But Cat can never resist a challenge, especially when Toby Marks, the world's Most Handsome Man, is the one offering it.

And that's just the start of her problems.